In this article I’ll give you the insider’s secret to making it worthwhile to do salon marketing.
This is not a step by step guide to marketing; in fact it bears little resemblance to actual marketing at all, although in saying that, the message is integral to the worth-while-ness of your marketing. Many salons spend many hours and many dollars creating advertising pieces to increase their business, and most don’t really have a plan or even an overall objective to doing this. Surely the reason we advertise and market our business is to not only gain new clients but to cement the relationships that we have with them so they become loyal repeat business.
I’ll get right to my point… I suggest that before you even think about marketing that you create a plan, (a vision or dream, if you will) of how your salon will perform for your clients, know the type of client you are looking to attract (Target Market) and how you and your team will perform the services that you offer. What standards will you demand from yourself and your team, how the salon will be presented, is it clean, professional, tidy and welcoming? Do you and your team participate in suppliers training sessions for the best use of your products? Participating in these can give you the skills to give the best advice for home care recommendations, or you can use advanced technical techniques to improve the end result of their selected service.
So what to do… Firstly audit your salons appearance and service levels. Identify any weak areas and address them immediately, a good start for a service improvement is hop outside and look at your salon from a client’s perspective, then walk through the salon with the same ‘Client Eye’ both you and your team can do this, it’s amazing what you notice with your Client hat on. Additionally, contact your suppliers and see what they can offer in the way of regular sales &/or technical training to improve skills. Another great resource for selling and or service courses is your local Chamber of Commerce, short and affordable courses that help. Suffice to say that the salon who wishes to improve will find a plethora of courses and helpful advice from many areas of business; these are just a couple of suggestions, for more get online and Google hair salon or beauty clinic courses or training, many of the trainings listed are free or very reasonably priced.
If you really want to dig deep on an audit of your salons performance to get the most from your marketing dollar, contact me and ask for the ‘Marketing Audit’ meeting, we’ll get you on the right track straight away.
As I said, your salon marketing is of value when the internal systems and standards are working to retain your clients that originated from your external advertising and marketing. Drop the ball on the in-salon relationship with your clients and you will soon find it difficult to attract new ones and that’s a slippery slope you don’t want to get on.
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